April 16, 2018

The Programming Historian 2018 Community Survey

Anandi Silva Knuppel

To participate in Programming Historian 2018 Community Survey, follow this link to a Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/2M8AbAiwgmGrD7MI3. The survey should take only a few minutes to complete and will close July 15, 2018.

In the spirit of community engagement that has long been the foundation of the Programming Historian, earlier this year, the editorial board determined that it was time again for us to get in touch with our readers, authors, reviewers, and editors about their experiences with the Programming Historian website, content, and overall vision. By learning more about our readership through a community survey, we hope to better serve our current community and to reach out to new audiences.

Similar to previous community engagements, our 2018 survey begins with a short questionnaire to find out more about our readers. As our readership expands organically, we are learning that individuals beyond our initially envisioned audience are using the Programming Historian lessons. In light of these new findings and with the recognition that the Programming Historian continues to grow, we’d like to get a sense of who reads our lessons and what they hope to get from the them so that we might better scope the vision of our lessons in general.

From there, the survey seeks to gain a better understanding about how our lessons are used. For example, do you come to the Programming Historian lessons to learn a tool or methodology for the first time or do you bookmark our lessons as a reference for your own research? We are also curious to know how easy it is to get involved with the Programming Historian for reviewers and authors so that we can continue to improve our publishing processes.

Our survey ends with an open-ended question. As a new member to the editorial board, I have been delighted to see the board continue to wrestle with the question “how can we do this better?”. As we work towards creating the Programming Historian we want, we also welcome ideas and suggestions from the community for improving our website, its content, and the user experience.

After the survey closes, a sub-group made up of our editorial board members will convene to discuss the results and propose actions to the rest of the board members. The Programming Historian will not keep the survey data and any data summaries created from this survey will meaningfully anonymized. We will publish the results of the survey and changes that come from it within a year of the survey publication.

To participate in the Programming Historian 2018 Community Survey, follow this link to a Google Form: https://goo.gl/forms/2M8AbAiwgmGrD7MI3. The survey should take only a few minutes to complete and will close July 15, 2018.

About the author

Anandi Silva Knuppel is a digital scholarship training coordinator and special projects liaison at Emory University.

The Programming Historian (ISSN: 2397-2068) is released under a CC-BY license.